


Icebreaker

by dracusfyre



Series: Blood and Iron [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Doombots (Marvel), Established Relationship, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Relationship Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27418558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracusfyre/pseuds/dracusfyre
Summary: Tony gets taken prisoner on what should have been a routine mission and meets a mysterious stranger.
Relationships: Loki/Tony Stark
Series: Blood and Iron [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/590155
Comments: 57
Kudos: 208
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV





	1. T1: Sharing Body Heat

“Well, shit,” Tony said, nudging his dead suit with his foot. He wrapped his arms around himself and briskly rubbed his hands up and down, trying to generate some warmth. His feet were already getting wet and cold standing in the snow with just his flight suit on, and it was snowing so hard he could feel the flakes trying to gather on his eyelashes. “Guess it’s time for us to blow this popsicle stand, eh Loki? Hopefully the others are having more luck.”

When there was a conspicuous silence, he turned his head to see Loki’s pained grimace. “The force that disabled your suit seems to be blocking my magic as well,” he said. “It looks like we will be making our escape on foot.”

Tony looked at the forbidding mountains around them, and down at the material of his flight suit. It was many things - durable, moisture wicking, inflammable, and looked damned good on him – but it was not warm enough to walk through the Caucasus Mountains in early winter. Tony was out of the mission as soon as he hit some kind of energy field that killed his suit, which was bad enough, but being stuck on foot out here, unable to call for help…well, that was a lot worse. “No magic, you said?” That explained why he wasn’t able to call his Oh Shit Suit, which was of course summoned by way of a spell. "I didn't know that could happen."

“It's certainly an unexpected occurrence," Loki said, sounding aggravated. "As far as I know, only Strange and his sorcerers could manage something like this. But it doesn’t seem to be impacting all of my powers,” Loki added. He formed a ball of ice between his hands. “Thought I doubt this will help.”

“Yeah, we don’t need to make it any colder.” He wasn’t going to get any warmer standing here, so he started walking back down the mountain to the rendezvous point. Hopefully they could walk out of range of whatever magic blocking field they were in before he got hypothermia. He’d have to come back for his suit later; Luckily, at the rate the snow was coming down, it would be covered before anyone else could find it. “Does your power go in the other direction?” He asked. Loki never talked about the powers he had from his Jotun ancestry, and now Tony was really regretting not spending some time investigating them. “You know, from cold to hot?” The Look Loki gave him said it all. “Worth a shot,” Tony muttered. “Don’t gotta be like that. It’s just managing the vibration of particles, seems weird you can slow them down but not speed them up.”

Loki didn’t bother respond to that. When Loki still couldn’t do magic after they had walked for thirty minutes down the mountain, Tony had to admit he was in trouble. It had been slow going, trying to pick their way through the woods without a trail. Loki had carried him for a while, but Tony had gotten colder faster when he wasn’t moving. “I’m not going to make it like this,” he said finally. “I need some kind of shelter.” Glancing behind him, he saw their footprints were already filling with snow; he hadn’t realized how far up to this mountain stronghold he’d flown until he had to walk back down.

Loki stopped and looked at him, and whatever he saw must have worried him because he just nodded instead of arguing. His eyebrows drew together and he held out his hands, and soon walls of ice began to form around them. It wasn’t long until they were as tall as Tony, and he exhaled with relief when they blocked the biting wind. The walls finally met over their heads, blocking the snow as well, and Tony was so grateful that for once he didn’t even make an Elsa joke. He also made himself not look at Loki while not _looking_ like he was trying not to look at Loki, to give him time for the blue to fade from his skin. Tony was pacing in a tight circle, bouncing up and down on his toes to stay warm, when he felt a sudden weight across his shoulders. Looking down, he realized it was Loki’s heavy leather surcoat. “I should have thought of that sooner,” Loki said, jaw tight. Tony realized he must look even worse than he felt, for Loki to be making a face like that.

“It helps, but it's not gonna do much unless I find a way to get warm. Can we like…” Tony shuffled closer and held his arms out. “Huddle together for warmth?”

Loki looked at him in disbelief and held out his hand. Tony touched it and jerked his hand back; Loki was icy cold. “Frost Giant,” he reminded Tony, sounding apologetic. Tony knew that, he should have remembered that; he knew being a Frost Giant wasn't just ice spells and blue skin, but it was getting hard to concentrate. Now that he was paying attention to it, he saw that Loki’s breath wasn’t even pluming in the air like his own. The cold was getting to him, he realized.

“Right, right,” Tony said, definitely thinking but not saying _oh God I’m going to die._ “The others probably noticed that my signal went dead and are looking for us, right?”

“Unless the same phenomenon that is affecting us has affected them as well,” Loki pointed out, and Tony’s eyes went wide. Natasha and Clint were in the Quinjet, using the snowstorm to cover their approach just like Tony, which meant that they were probably grounded too. Steve and Bucky were approaching on foot like Loki had been but they were supposed to be on the other side of the mountain which didn't help much.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Tony chanted, jumping up and down to keep warm. He was starting to shiver; it was intermittent now, but soon he would be doing it uncontrollably and that would be a very bad sign. He tried to wrack his brain for an idea, any idea, for what they could do. Stupid mountain. Stupid snow. Stupid mission for stupid Fury looking for…Tony couldn’t even remember. Something stupid. Probably Hydra. What the _hell_ had knocked out his suit, anyway? It's not like he didn't insulate the electrical systems against EMP waves and shorts. And what was keeping Loki on lockdown? He would definitely be including this possibility in future contingency planning, apparently he and Loki had gotten way too complacent about relying on his magic in case of emergencies.

“I could search for help,” Loki offered. An odd note in his voice made Tony look up, and he saw that Loki’s eyes were anguished, face drawn. His hands were fisted by his sides, like he didn’t know what to do with himself, and his shoulders were tight. Loki was terrified.

“Loki…” Tony started, but he didn’t know what to say. He could only imagine how Loki must be feeling; watching someone he cared about freeze to death in front of him was literally straight out of one of his nightmares. “It will be fine. Someone will find us. It’s already feeling better in here,” he said, suppressing a shiver as he curled his arms inside the heavy leather, ignoring the fact that he couldn’t feel his feet.

“But will they get here in time?” Loki eyed Tony with dismay, and Tony smiled reassuringly at him. At least, he thought he did. His face was feeling pretty numb. “I could move faster if I go without you, find the others and bring them back.”

“That’s true,” Tony allowed. He started jumping up and down again and stuck his hands in his armpits. The real truth was that he really didn’t want to be alone, stomping around in the cold in the dark, trying to keep his core body temperature up while wondering how many body parts he was losing to the ice. But that wasn’t part he was afraid of; the scary part was how people said that acute hypothermia affected your mind, made you act irrational. The thought that he might get to a point where he couldn’t trust his own mind, or that he might not even realize what he was doing…Tony shook his head to dispel the thought. “You should go,” he said with a decisive nod. He wasn’t going to make Loki stay here and watch him freeze to death. “Go get help. Just, ah…don’t take long.”

Loki nodded in confirmation and hovered for a few more minutes before he forced himself to turn and leave. Tony started to pace around the confines of the tiny igloo Loki had built for him, stomping his feet to encourage blood flow, and tried to think of things that could have knocked out his suit without so much as a warning like that. He tried to think of anything, do anything, to keep from dwelling on how grim the situation was. Jesus, this would be such a stupid way to die. He was going to do so many things different if he got off of this goddamn mountain. Did he even have a will? That sounded like something Pepper would have done for him, but it wouldn't have been updated for years; would it be silly to give all of his stuff to Loki? Probably. He should give it to Peter instead, make some kind of trust or something.

He resolved to do that if he ever made it back to his tower. _When_ , he told himself, not really believing it. Fuck, it was cold. He forced himself to keep walking in circles, to keep moving, even when his feet started to drag from lethargy. "Any minute now Loki will return with help," he said out loud, hoping that hearing it would make it feel more true. He stumbled and caught himself against the wall, flinching away from the ice, hand burning from cold. Soon, he feared, he would stumble and not catch himself in time, and if he fell he didn't know if he'd have the strength to get back up again.

All in all, Tony reflected later from the fanciest prison cell he’d ever seen, it was probably just as well at that moment a robot kicked down Loki’s ice walls and carried him away.


	2. S4 Victor von Doom

It was a statement of how cold Tony was that when the robot carried him to the castle they had been sent here to infiltrate, all he could feel was grateful that he was inside. The robot, which looked vaguely familiar for some reason, dropped him unceremoniously in a giant library in front of a fireplace, and Tony’s not even embarrassed to say that he spent the first few minutes of what became his captivity trying to convince himself not to climb inside the fire instead of looking for a way to escape. He even took the soaking wet feet off of his flight suit and set them next to the fire, wiggling his toes on the warm stone in front of the fireplace. He wanted to cry with relief as he soaked up the fire's heat, shivers coming harder and faster now as he warmed up, and hoped that whoever he had been brought here to meet took their time to get here. 

“You’re not a guest, Tony Stark,” a deep, strangely echoing voice said from behind him a little while later. Tony jumped and realized there was another door on the far side of the room, hidden in shadows thrown by the fire. “I suggest you don’t get too comfortable.”

Turning, Tony squinted to see the speaker in the relative dimness of the library, night sight shot from staring at the fire for the last few minutes. “You seem to have the better of me,” Tony said lightly, trying to sound completely at ease, an effect that was ruined when he shivered halfway through speaking.

“Yes,” the voice agreed. Tony could make out the outline of the speaker now; it sounded like a man, and Tony could see he was tall and wearing a dark green robes, cinched at the waste with a wide belt, and a cloak with a hood that covered his face. As he approached, Tony saw a gleam of metal on his body and realized the man must be wearing armor under his clothes. As the man came closer, the light of the fire was enough to penetrate the shadow cast by the hood and Tony saw he was even wearing a metal mask on his face, shaped with a nose and cheekbones to make it look more life-like. For protection, or to hide his identity? Tony wondered if other people found talking to his faceplate this unnerving, with its empty eyes and slit for a mouth.

“So, are you going to introduce yourself, or just stand there menacingly?” Thankfully the shivering seemed to be fading, but now he was thoroughly exhausted, his body having burned through all of its energy keeping him alive. His situation was still dire, albeit in a different way, but at this point, he was too tired to really care. He hoped he wasn't in for a long monologue or witty banter; he really just wanted to lie down.

“You come halfway across the world to invade my mountain stronghold, and you don’t even know my name? Typical.” The man stopped several feet away and crossed his arms. He was definitely wearing some kind of armor; probably mechanized, from the way it was moving. Copycat.

“Our intel reports said this was a former Hydra stronghold that was active again,” Tony said irritably. Behind him was a huge wooden coffee table; he dragged it closer to the fire and sat down. “So we assumed it was Hydra. _Are_ you Hydra?”

“I’m not sure what about your situation makes you think you are in a position to question me,” the man said.

“Well, I would kind of like to know if you plan to kill me or not,” Tony said. “Or whether you are going to torture me first, that kind of thing. That seems like a reasonable request.”

“I have no interest in taking your life, Stark.” With that cryptic remark, the man gestured and the robot that had rescued him from the snow came forward to take Tony by the arm and drag him away from the lovely fire. It forced him through long stone hallways, softened by rugs and tapestries and portraits of the man that had been in the library, all featuring the hooded cloak and the armor. He was taken down stairs and then pushed into a room that also had a carpet, albeit threadbare, and heavy wooden bed and table and chairs. If it wasn’t for the lack of windows and the metal door with the sophisticated electronic lock, it would seem almost like a hotel room. It wasn’t as warm as being by the fire, but it was warm enough. Tony stood there for a long moment, debating resting versus escaping; he made one herculean effort to examine the room and almost toppled over in the attempt so in the end he climbed into the bed and burrowed under the blanket, feeling only slight bad about getting the sheets wet. As he huddled under the blanket, chafing his limbs together to get warmer, the nagging sense that he’d seen that robot before bothered him like a loose tooth; he stared at the ceiling, thoughts far away as he tried to place where he knew it from. It's not like there were a lot of autonomous robot manufacturers out there, and it definitely wasn't Hammer tech. Unfortunately, he was so tired that it was hard to focus; his eyelids kept sliding shut from exhaustion until, even as he was trying to count the reasons why it would be dumb to fall asleep, he fell asleep.

* * *

“It looks bad, but we are assuming he’s not dead,” Steve said. "Right?" His hands were on his hips as he stared at the deep footprints in the snow, footprints that marched directly to the castle they were supposed to be surveilling. He could see where Tony’s feet had trampled the snow flat inside the circle of Loki’s broken ice walls, telling its own story of a man desperately trying to stay warm. Loki picked up his leather surcoat from where it had been dropped and shook it out with a scowl. 

“Obviously,” Loki snapped as he threw it back over his shoulders. “There is no body, is there?”

Stephen sighed and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Also, Loki would know if Tony were dead,” he said. He looked peeved that Loki had dragged him out of whatever he had been in the middle of to come deal with whoever was inside the castle, particularly when it involved coming out in the cold and heavy snow. 

“So what’s the plan?” Natasha said, voice muffled by the thick scarf wrapped around her lower face. The Quinjet had indeed been hit by the same anti-electrical field that had apparently shut down Tony’s suit, but she’d had more advanced warning and was able to bring the aircraft in for a landing before it crashed. She and Clint had been trying to raise someone on the staticky radios when Loki had found them and dragged them all here, along with Steve and Bucky who had been all but physically dragged away from their surveillance posts to help.

“We find Stark and kill whoever took him prisoner,” Loki said. He gestured to the footprints in the snow. “He shouldn’t be hard to find, should he? Even for you?”

“Loki, save the attitude for the bad guy,” Stephen said impatiently. “We all want to save Tony too.” Steve saw Bucky’s eyebrows fly up and Steve agreed with the sentiment; he got the feeling that of everyone standing there, only Stephen could get away with talking to Loki like that. 

“Then our original plan is still good,” Natasha pointed out. “We each take a separate entrance and search for either Tony or whatever is causing the disruption to our electronics and your magic.”

Steve nodded. “But let’s stay in pairs since we don’t know what we’re dealing with.” 

Loki and Stephen agreed to take the farthest entrance, since Loki could move quickly through the snow while Stephen could move quickly over it, floating over the ground thanks to his magic cloak, words that Steve still had a hard time even thinking much less saying out loud. Natasha and Clint took the closest one, and Steve and Bucky picked the one in the middle.

As they all separated, Bucky waited until they couldn’t see or hear anyone else before he said, “I feel bad for Loki. He must be losing his shit with Tony missing.”

Steve grunted at that. To him, Loki had looked more pissed than worried; Steve would not want to be on the receiving end of Loki's bad mood. Personally, he felt more sympathy for the person who thought he could keep Tony captive and had made a bet with Clint as to whether Tony would even need rescuing when they found him. 

Bucky was quiet again for a long time before he said, “Hey, if there’s some kind of shield keeping the wizards from doing magic, why could Stephen still fly?”

“I have no idea,” Steve said, steps never faltering as he broke a path through the deep snow. “But I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask, because then he'd explain.”

* * *

“Why is Loki here again?” Clint asked as they hiked. They had night vision goggles on and while Natasha was searching the woods to see if they were being watched, he was mostly using his to keep himself from tripping over his snowshoes.

“Fury said this was a Hydra base, and Loki had agreed to help us finish mopping up Hydra. After the statue incident, Fury said he was going to make damn sure he got his money’s worth out of Loki,” Natasha answered voice pitched low so it wouldn’t carry or echo in the forest. "Which means calling him out on anything that could possibly involve Hydra." Normally she would have told Clint to can it, but the dark night, the ominous castle, the inexplicable failure of their electronics, and then the mysterious disappearance of one of her teammates was making her feel a bit…Wary, she decided was the word she wanted. Not spooked. Black Widows didn’t get spooked.

“And he brought Dr. Strange because…?”

“Magic stuff.” Specifically, she’d heard Loki say, as he and Dr. Strange had argued their way up to Natasha and Clint’s position, “If you are going to give yourself the ridiculous mantle of Sorcerer Supreme, you have to help me deal with whatever cut rate magic user is barricaded in this castle and preventing me from casting spells.”

“I hate magic stuff,” Clint complained. He glanced up to see how much further they had to go and then looked back down at his feet with a huff. “I hate that there’s two of them now.”

Natasha didn’t have the heart to tell him there were a lot more than that. “He’s not so bad,” Natasha said vaguely. She’d talked Steve through a lot of tough times as part of James’ recovery, most of which had been spent at Stephen’s house under his care – as a doctor, though, not as a sorcerer or wizard or whatever they called themselves. So she’d heard all about the disappearing and reappearing, the glowing green, the meditating three feet off the ground and sentient cape. Clint would have noped out of that in a hurry. 

“And what’s the deal with Tony and Loki, anyway?”

Natasha stiffened. She’d wondered if Clint would catch that. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, Nat. I’ve been out of the game for a while but even I could tell that Loki was freaking out that Tony was gone. He was more concerned with Steve and Steve's usually the mother hen.”

Natasha could feel Clint’s eyes on her back as they made their way through the snowy forest. For a few moments there was only the soft sounds of their snowshoes, and finally she said, “I don’t know what the deal is,” erring on the side of caution. It wasn't her place to tell tales about other peoples' personal lives; she didn't barter in those kinds of secrets. “I know they’ve been working together a lot, first against the rest of the Chitauri army, then against Hydra. Other than that…” She shrugged.

Clint grunted. “The way Loki was acting you’d think they were dating or married or something.”

Natasha just pressed her lips together and kept walking. 

* * *

Strange thankfully held his tongue until the others were well away, but once they were alone he asked the question that struck right at the heart of Loki’s fears: “I feel like I should have asked this earlier, but does the spell that extends Tony’s life grant him your strength and invulnerability as well?”

“No,” Loki forced out around the icy grip of dread in his chest. Watching the speed at which Stark succumbed to the winter cold had reminded Loki of how terrifyingly fragile humans were. It was easy to forget that Stark was human at all, given the company he kept; it beggared belief that the man could stand toe to toe with Banner’s beast on a field of battle then come home and be wounded by paper and too-hot coffee. Right now Loki knew Stark was alive, but that was all he knew; any number of things could be happening to him and Loki would be none the wiser. The thought made him want to break something but he just gritted his teeth and walked faster.

“Do you have any idea what could be preventing us from doing magic?” Strange said after a moment, wisely changing the subject.

“Do _you_ , Sorcerer Supreme?” Loki snarled. It was no spell, he knew that much; he was more than familiar with power-suppressing spells, and this didn’t feel the same, didn't have the same shape. Whatever was happening here made trying to do magic feel like trying to start a fire in an airless room.

“I have some ideas,” Strange said. “If you notice, the effect is gradual and is getting stronger the closer we get to the castle, so that implies that it is an effect that is radiating from a central point, perhaps a device or an artifact.”

At that, Loki stopped dead in his tracks and he looked at Strange in disbelief. “It’s getting stronger?”

Strange pointed at his cloak, which had been levitating him above the snow and allowing him to keep up with Loki. When they’d started, he was a foot above the snow, but now he was barely inches. “It’s struggling to keep me afloat,” Strange pointed out. “I can only assume that soon it will stop altogether.”

Loki muttered a curse under his breath and kept walking. As he did, he surreptitiously tried to summon ice to his hand, and felt what Strange had observed. Before, he couldn't do spells but the power that lived in his bones obeyed him easily. Now, however that power came sluggishly with effort, and when it finally did it took a long time for the blue to fade from his skin afterwards. Loki tightened his hand into a fist and felt his stomach turn; the implications were obvious. The thought of standing before Strange and the others, his Jotun skin bared for all to see, made his gorge rise and turned his limbs to lead. It had been hard enough to reveal himself to Stark, but this...Gritting his teeth, he pushed the thought aside and focused on finding Stark, refusing to let his footsteps slow. Just one more reason why he was going to find whatever was suppressing his magic, destroy it, and then turn this castle and its owner into a molten slag of rubble.


	3. K4 Science and Magic

Tony had no idea how long he’d been asleep when the memory of where he’d seen the robot before catapulted him awake. “The tower,” he said out loud to the empty room, suddenly wide awake. He didn’t sit up because he was finally warm and very comfortable, but he did blink rapidly as he remembered. Months and months ago a swarm of robots just like these had attacked the tower; they hadn’t done any damage because of Loki’s shield and Tony had suited up and taken care of them quite easily, so when nothing else happened Tony had handed the problem over to Fury and forgotten about them. But even though he had barely skimmed the intel briefing for this mission, he knew he hadn’t seen anything in there about the robots, which meant that Fury hadn’t made the connection when he’d sent the team over here. He lay there for a few more minutes, trying to figure out why some random guy in a former Hydra castle would want to attack him, but eventually gave up because there just wasn’t enough information to piece it together. But now that he was thoroughly awake, he figured he should probably start investigating the possibility of escape; if Loki and the others hadn’t come for him yet, they would probably be there soon, and he would never hear the end of it if he just waited in bed for them to show up like some kind of damsel in distress.

But he was taking the blankets with him, Tony thought defiantly, rolling out of bed with the heavy comforter around his shoulders. He dragged it around with him as he studied the room from wall to wall and ceiling to corner; the bed was a sturdy wooden affair that would take some effort to break, though it could theoretically have been used to bar the door if the door didn’t open out into the hall instead of into the room. A look under the bed revealed a short, squat metal basin, and Tony wrinkled his nose when he realized it was there in lieu of a bathroom. Wasn't going to be much use against the robot or a man wearing armor though. The chairs were more promising; Tony lifted one experimentally to judge its heft and marked it down as a “maybe.” The rug didn’t hide any secret trapdoors and the corners of the room didn’t reveal anything beyond dust. It was just what it looked like, a big stone cube with stuff in it, no surprises. 

Absent any other ideas, Tony banged on the door. “Hey, are we going to talk, or are you going to keep me in here until a bunch of my friends show up? I could go either way, but one of those options is going to involve a lot more property damage than the other.” He didn’t expect a response, but surprisingly after a moment the door unlocked with a loud click. Tony pushed it open to see another robot – or maybe it was the same one, who knew – waiting in the hallway. Tony stared at it for a second, waiting for it to do or say anything, and when it came closer, arm outstretched to grab him, he threw the blanket over its head and slipped past it to the hallway. He'd been tired earlier, but not so tired that he didn't remember the way out. As he ran, he could hear the bot lumbering behind him - Tony hadn't figured out how to make his suit or bots run fast, so he had bet that this person hadn't either - but he didn't look back. 

At first he ran past the door to the library, but he realized his mistake quickly when the hallway got unfamiliar, so he turned back only to find the door locked. "Fuck!" He said, trying to turn the handle again. He kicked the door, but only out of frustration because no standard model human was going to be able to kick it down. The bot was gaining on him, so Tony took a chance and kept running, only to turn a corner and see two more bots waiting for him, just like the first. He backpedaled and started to go the other direction, but whoever was controlling the bots had him cornered, so finally he made a face and raised his hands in surrender. "It was worth a shot," he said out loud as two of the bots clamped a metal hand like a vise around each one of Tony’s arm in case he got any other bright ideas and escorted him down the stone corridors again. 

This time the walk didn’t end in the library from earlier, but in a workshop not too different from Tony’s own. More robots, less cars and random projects, with a sprinkling of what Tony was surprised to see was magical paraphernalia like crystals, spell circles, and other random stuff that reminded him of Loki's corner of the lab; it was surprising not just because its always strange to come across another sorcerer/wizard/whatever, but because Tony actually recognized it for what it was. Movement on the other side of the room caught his eye, and Tony dragged his eyes away from the agonizingly interesting stuff lying around to see his mysterious “host” sitting on what could only be described as a throne. A _throne._ Whoever this was wore a _cape_ and sat on a _throne._ He couldn’t wait for the rest of the team to get a load of this guy.

“The others are knocking at the door of my castle,” the man observed, still not bothering to introduce himself. “So I suppose I must decide what to do with you.”

“Letting me go would be the best choice,” Tony suggested. “Since you already said you didn't want to kill me. I mean, I make for a horrible prisoner, and there's no reason to turn this into a fight…again, I mean, since you lost so badly last time. You know, it took me a minute to remember where I'd seen these bots before, but I finally got it,” he explained, gesturing to the one beside him. "So if you're mad that I'm here, I'd like the record to show that you started it by attacking my tower.”

“You are so arrogant,” the man spat. “All of you, you _Avengers,_ ” he said with a sneer in his voice, “think you know best for the world, that you get to tell everyone what to do because you have power. For too long you have operated with impunity.” He stood, cape moving around his legs as he paced in front of his throne. “You will see, if you have not already, that you are not the only ones in the world with power.”

At first, Tony was taken aback by the anger in the man’s voice, but after a few minutes it pissed him off; it’s not like they went gallivanting all over the world for fun or personal profit, or like they hadn’t suffered in the process of trying to save the world. “You want a seat at the super-heroing table, give me a name and I’ll send you an application,” Tony said sharply, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry we rolled up to your crib here uninvited, but we thought we had a good reason. If I had known beforehand that you were the one to attack my tower with your ugly-ass robots we would have had an even better reason. And I don't know what you're complaining about, it's not as if we've even caused any property damage. _Yet._ So quit with the grandstanding and the complaining already and get on with it.”

“One day, Tony Stark,” the man said, coming to a halt in front of Tony, “you will understand that you just met your doom.”

As the man lifted his hand and pointed it at him, Tony dove to one side behind a work table and had the thought that he probably should have encouraged the guy to keep talking to buy more time instead of goading him. He braced himself for the noise and impact of the man's hidden weapon, but instead the silence was split by a growl of rage. Peeking up from behind a table, he saw Loki descend from the rafters in a blur of leather and gold and land on the man, driving two familiar knives into the man’s chest, one on each side of his neck. Loki’s momentum should have driven him to the ground, but the man only staggered forward; instead of falling into the ground and dying very quickly of blood loss, the man reached up to pull Loki off of him. Loki twisted away from the hands, pirouetting gracefully to land on his feet behind him and kick him in the back while he was off balance, sending him to his knees.

“Where is Anthony Stark?” Loki snarled as he stalked forward, more knives already in his hands as the man climbed to his feet.

“I’m here, Loki!” Tony called out from behind them. “I'm ok! But, uh, the reunion will have to wait,” he added as the robots that he’d seen around the edges of the lab, the ones that he’d assumed were works in progress, started advancing on them. “You brought backup, right?” he called out as he started searching around him for a weapon.

His answer came pretty quickly as Steve's shield came spinning out of the shadows and decapitated a robot with a familiar ringing sound, followed by gunfire. Then Tony was back to ducking as he tried to stay out of the way of stray bullets. Glancing over, he saw that Loki was standing the middle of the room, heedless of the chaos around him as Steve and the others fought the waves of robots that had started flooding into the room from other parts of the castle. Tony couldn't see his face, but the body of the man who had been holding court with Tony moments before was headless at his feet and instead of blood there were...wires?

“What the hell?” Tony said. He had _definitely_ been talking a person earlier, right? Inside the library?

Tony was so distracted by this that he forgot to keep an eye out for robots and he only realized his danger when he felt a cape brush his leg. Looking up, he saw another clone of the one that had been on the throne, and he rolled out of the way as a bolt of lighting hit the ground where he had been. As he rolled, he found a wrench from an overturned tool box and as the robot turned to shoot at him again, he slammed it as hard as he could against the unarmored knee joints of the robot,. It listed to one side, shot going wide, as the hydraulic pistons that made its lower leg move cracked and the hinge joint was knocked out of socket; while it was off balance, Tony kicked its foot out from under it and rolled out of the way as it fell to the ground. He smashed the visual processors in its head then started crushing all of the vulnerable joints, making sure to crush whatever weapons were hidden in its lower arms and hands. When he was done, the robot was still twitching, looking creepily like a dead body as its central processors sent orders to limbs that were too damaged to function.

Scrambling to his feet, he used a fallen metal table for concealment as he peeked around at the rest of the room. Still in the middle of the room with a pile of broken bots at his feet, Loki had ripped the arm off a robot and was beating it with it, catching another robot by the throat as it tried to swarm him and throwing it across the room to smash against the stone wall; Steve had embedded his shield in the chest of a robot and as Tony watched James punched the shield with his metal arm, cutting the robot in half. He couldn’t see Clint, but he could see the arrows that were sprouting out of bots all over the room, half of which shorted out the bots while the other half blew gaping holes wherever they hit. He couldn’t see Natasha for a moment then she stood up on the other side of the room, blowing some strands of hair out of her face as she caught her breath, a dead robot at her feet. She saw him looking and waved with a quirk of her lips. She made a “what the hell?” face from across the room, and Tony just shrugged like “I don’t know either.” She turned her attention to a robot that just came into the room, so Tony flipped the wrench in his hand and looked for his own target. But it appeared that either they'd destroyed them all or whoever was controlling them decided to cut their losses because Tony didn’t see any other new robots join the fray. After studying the room for a moment, he threw his wrench at a robot that was grappling with Steve, whose shield was now stuck in one of the wooden support beams set around the room. Tony was proud when the wrench struck its head, jarring its sensors just enough that Steve was able to roundhouse kick it in the head. It staggered to one side, its sensory processors and internal gyroscopes clearly compromised, then James punched a hole in the middle of it and it went down. Steve glanced over to see where the wrench had come from and nodded when Tony gave him a cheeky salute.

Then, almost as suddenly as the fight began, it was over. There was a moment of wary silence as they all waited for something else to happen, and then Tony was almost bowled off his feet by Loki. Cold hands had a tight grip on Tony’s arms while a fierce red-eyed gaze raked him from head to foot, checking for injuries; Tony realized just then that Loki was blue _,_ all the way blue, in a way that he'd never let Tony see before. Cold radiated off him, smelling like new snow as Tony gaped, eyes running over the exotic markings on his forehead and cheeks, even on his throat as it disappeared into his high collar. Staring, Tony's brain tried to find comparisons for the deep blue of Loki's skin, feeling like a lovesick idiot when words like _sapphire_ and _cobalt_ and _azure_ ran through his head unironically before landing on lapis lazuli.

He was _beautiful_.

Apparently satisfied that Tony was none the worse for wear, Loki cupped his hands around Tony’s neck, thumbs pressed against the hinge of his jaw, and kissed him like he’d thought he’d never see him again. Loki's hands were cold, his mouth was cold, but Tony didn't care; as he bent beneath the intensity of Loki's kiss, Tony’s hands came up to squeeze his forearms soothingly. “I’m okay, he murmured against Loki’s lips. “I’m fine, see?”

“Who in Hel’s name was that?” Loki asked when he pulled away, voice still full of a frustrated rage that even a few minutes of solid violence hadn’t helped. As Tony watched, the blue was starting to fade away, red eyes turning green again. 

“I have no clue, he never…” Tony suddenly realized that everyone was staring at them. “Whoops. Uh, surprise?”


	4. S1 Stephen Strange

Before Tony could blink or say anything else Clint had an arrow pointed at Loki's face, the explosive charge on the end primed and ready. Tony had never seen his eyes so cold and hard, his mouth a grim line as he studied Loki like he was a poisonous snake. Tony got the feeling that the only reason why he hadn't loosed his bow yet was because Tony was in the way, and the realization made Tony tighten his grip on Loki in case he had any bright ideas about pushing Tony to one side. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath as Clint and Loki stared at each other, having an unspoken conversation that no one else was a part of. Tony's heart was in his throat as images flashed behind his eyes - if Clint attacked Loki, Loki would retaliate; Tony would defend him, but Natasha wouldn't let Clint get hurt by Loki again. What would Steve do? Would Barnes defend the man who had saved him from Hydra, or follow Steve's lead? 

After what felt like forever, Clint's gaze flicked over to Tony. Tony didn't know what he was looking for, but he must have found it because just as suddenly as he raised his bow, he lowered it again, deactivating the explosive arrow with a beep that seemed loud in the silence. "I still hate you," he said to Loki. "And you're an asshole," he told Tony. Then he turned on his heel and walked away as if he couldn't stand to be near them anymore. Natasha flashed them a look that Tony couldn't interpret and followed him. 

Tony let his breath out in a rush. "What in the hell was that about?"

"He thought I was mind controlling you," Loki said, shoulders relaxing imperceptibly. His hands fell away from Tony's face, trailing down his arms before letting go as if he were reluctant to stop touching him. Tony squeezed Loki's hand and kissed the back of it before letting go as well.

"How could you tell?" Tony watched as Natasha and Clint had a conversation on the far side of the lab, heads bowed together. Tony made a face, realizing way too late that he definitely should have had a conversation with Clint about Loki before they all went on this mission. He'd assumed that since they weren't all riding in on the Quinjet together that Clint and Loki wouldn't have any reason to interact, but in hindsight he had probably just been trying to avoid an awkward conversation. 

"I was in his mind for many days," Loki said. "I know how he thinks."

"That could have gone better," Stephen observed dryly. "Sorry to interrupt the dramatic reunion, Loki, but I thought you might want to know that the magic block is gone." He made a ball of swirly golden light between his palms in demonstration. "I think we might want to investigate potential causes and leave the reunion for when you can get a room."

"We should all search this place for more information," Steve said while Tony made a _ha ha very funny_ face at Stephen. "Tony, did you learn anything while you were here?"

Loki followed Stephen across the room to where the magic paraphernalia was concentrated while Tony turned to face Steve and Barnes. "So no comment on the Loki thing? Guess the cat's out of the bag, huh?"

Steve looked a little pained but Barnes was smirking. "Big cat, small bag, Stark. Congratulations. The blue part is new, though."

Tony shrugged at that; if they wanted to know they'd have to ask Loki himself. "Did Loki tell you? About us? You don't seem surprised."

Barnes snorted. "Didn't have to. I got eyes." He elbowed Steve in the side. "Steve didn't want to believe me. I guess you having dated Pepper made him think you had better taste."

"Like he's one to talk," Tony said, and Barnes barked out a laugh. "To answer your question, Steve, no. Whoever this was didn't even give me a name." He stooped down to look at one of the destroyed robots at his feet. "I did recognize these robots, though. They attacked my tower a while ago."

"Why would this guy send his robots after you?" Steve asked. "If you don't even know who he is?"

"That's the mystery, isn't it?" Tony let the robot drop to the floor and stood. "I guess since magic is back, I can bring these back to the tower and study them. I didn't get much from the robots back then, but he's made some upgrades so who knows."

"Right. Well, let's split up and see what else we can-" He was cut off by a thundering crash and a vibration that shook the floor. Steve cursed. "The place is self-destructing, we need to get out of here!" he called out to the team. "Stephen, can you-"

"On it," Stephen said, and a golden circle split the air in the middle of the room, leading to Tony's den.

"To the lab!" Tony shouted, already dragging a robot towards the portal. Stephen rolled his eyes so hard that his head moved but the scene changed, showing the concrete walls and floor of Tony's work room. Tony shoved the robot through the portal with a grunt of effort and turned to grab another one.

"Everyone grab what you can, we'll look at it later," Steve ordered as the building vibrated again. Across the room, Loki and Stephen were making things disappear at an impressive rate while Barnes helped Tony grab a couple of more robots and Natasha and Clint came running up with armfuls of paper. 

"We found an office on the far side," Natasha explained breathlessly as she tossed the papers through the portal. Clint was staring at the portal like it had personally insulted him and killed his dog but chucked his papers through it as well. "Think we have time for another run?" The next vibration resulted in a large crash as a piece of the ceiling fell, making everyone duck. "Right," Natasha said before Steve could say anything and shoved a reluctant Clint through the portal. 

Loki was the last to go through, then they all watched for a minute as the castle collapsed, Stephen finally closing the portal when debris blocked their view. "That guy was really dedicated to preserving his secrets," Barnes observed into the thoughtful silence.

"Yeah, seriously. The only thing he really said to me, other than general complaining about the Avengers," Tony said, everyone nodding because they knew what kind of complaining he was talking about, "was, ‘I have no interest in taking your life, Stark,’ which, you know. Yay, but ominous.”

“Weird," Natasha said. She crouched and rifled through the piles of paper on the floor before picking one up. "We've got a name though. Dr. Victor von Doom."

Tony stared at her. "Seriously?"

"Yeah." She pointed to a line on the paper. "See?"

"Dr. Doom," Tony read out loud. "Of course he is," he sighed. "There’s always something, isn't there. I mean, for crying out loud, _Dr. Doom?_ That sounds like the most made up name I've ever heard. What's next? Dr. Death? Dr. Mysterious?" he complained, then saw Stephen looking at him with a raised eyebrow. "Right, sorry." He set the piece of paper down on a table and ran his hands through his hair. "Maybe we can find a forwarding address. I'd like to let him know that I'm not in the market for a mysterious nemesis right now, so thanks but no thanks."

"Well, we have a name now," Steve pointed out. "At least we have a place to start looking. He won't be able to stay off our radar for long."

"Still. Who needs another guy running around trying to play King of the Hill." Tony nudged one of the bots at his feet and said, “JARVIS, play _Everybody Wants to Rule the World._ ” 


End file.
